January 03, 2009

Refresher Course

The earliest recorded post on ARNABlog was on June 7th, 2006. This was the day I graduated from Simon Fraser University (SFU) as a proud holder of a Bachelors of Science degree from the schools of Computing Science and Business Administration. As I specialized in Information Systems, it was actually a joint major in both these disciplines. I had the option of taking more difficult courses to obtain the BSc, or I could take easier ones and settle for a BBA.

I crisscrossed the globe in the next two and a half years, collecting a profusion of experiences and leaving behind a legacy of goodwill. I flew off to India, worked tirelessly for a year with Satyam, traveled to Europe, returned to Vancouver, found a job with ResponseTek, and took a few courses at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. I finally returned to the SFU Burnaby campus when the annual open house was held.

Eager students demonstrated their projects and explained why they were drawn to one field or another. The students had not changed much from my years, although the physical infrastructure had improved vastly. New buildings had popped up on the fringes of the university that I remembered. The bus stops were now covered, protecting today's students from the harsh elements of Burnaby Mountain. I also discovered that SFU had an impressive Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, something I had never stumbled upon during my years as a scholar there.

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Refresher course definition: A course that reviews and updates a topic for those who have not kept abreast of developments.